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Monday, April 30, 2012

On Sunday April 29th, Patriot Island held it's monthly Wounded Warriors benefit. The event began at 6 PM, with ReggieSunset Rookswood taking the stage, and about a few dozen danced to his music on the floor below. On either side of the stage, two kiosks resembling overturned helmets accepted the donations.

As the event went on, the total amount gathered was announced to the audience. Finally at 6:54, the hundred thousand threshhold was crossed, "We have 102,925L so far!" At 7PM, it was Frets Nirvana who took the stage, and the music & dancing went on.

The event went on to 9PM SL time (Midnight EST), and a total of 214,000 Lindens were raised. Frets told that next month's singers will be, "PonDman, Guitar Zane, little old me, Mulder Watts and Voodoo Shilton."

According to writer Andy Greenman, Trevor Timm, a lawyer and activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, felt, "the House’s early vote on CISPA as an attempt by its author, representative Mike Rogers, to squeeze the bill through before its opposition grew any stronger." The bill was also amended before passage, "the House voted to amend the bill to actually allow even more types of private sector information to be shared with government agencies, not merely in matters of cybersecurity or national security, but in the investigation of vaguely defined cybersecurity 'crimes,' 'protection of individuals from the danger of death or serious bodily harm,' and cases that involve the protection of minors from exploitation." It was a move that raised further concerns from opponents. Techdirt.com's Leigh Beadon called it "an absolutely terrible change."

"Somehow, incredibly, this was described as limiting CISPA, but it accomplishes the exact opposite," Beadon wrote, "CISPA is now a completely unsupportable bill that rewrites (and effectively eliminates) all privacy laws for any situation that involves a computer. Far from the defense against malevolent foreign entities that the bill was described as by its authors, it is now an explicit attack on the freedoms of every American."

The bill still has to be passed in the Senate before heading to the White House, which has come out against it recently. Timm saw hope it would be beaten, "We’ve seen an explosion of a variety of groups and congressmen coming out against the bill,” he says. “As the Senate debates this, it’s good that privacy and civil liberties will be front and center.”

It was a calm April day so far at Podex. Between busy moments, the tellers would talk about various things. April Fools Day and Easter were a while ago and talked about some, notably the "Easter Town" exhibit, but not a lot. What got more discussion was the decision from above not to hold an official Gridwide anniversary event, and the Fantasy Faire late in the month.

It was during one moment of this discussion that a figure walked in. With his long ears, carrot in the mouth, and bushy tail, he was recognizable as a kani or anthro rabbit. But this one wasn't dressed up for Easter. He had on a set of chainmail armor, with a warhammer on his back.

"Um," one clerk spoke up a bit worried, "This isn't a hold-up, is it?"

"Huh? Oh no-no!" spoke the visitor, "I was at the Fantasy Faire earlier. Do I need to leave the hammer outside?"

"It's fine as long as you're wearing it and not swinging it. Sorry about that. What can we do for you?"

"Well, I need a few Lindens to help my Relay team meet it's goal at tonight's event, and I need enough left over to meet my tier. Do you accept Euros?"

"We most certainly do." The long eared visitor and the teller soon worked out a deal and the Lindens were exchanged for the armored guy's Euros.

"Hope all goes well at the Faire," the teller told him.

"Thank you," the armored kani told him, "Just don't expect any late Easter eggs. Thanks to these long ears, people have been making jokes all month."

Today, Grease Coakes describes a unique group in Second Life which he joined. If one likes going to a lot of clubs, joining up groups just to get notices of events can quickly take up a lot of room. Xavier Thiebaud came up with one solution, forming a group called "The A-List."

Another "Flufee" machinima from Pooky Amsterdam and Draxtor Despres, "Kaito helps Mika recover a mysterious box....what does this have to with Flufee? Watch, find out & enjoy pondering life's persistent questions...."

Saturday, April 28, 2012

At 12 Noon Friday April 27th, "Occuplaya" opened up at Burning Man Deep Hole sim. The Burn2 spinoff event features live musicians, DJs, artists and builds, and more. Gemma Cleanslate was there, and wrote up on this weekend happening.

On Friday night, the Steelhead Community held a 60's themed dance, with a Woodstock look. Woodstock certainly seemed like an odd mix with this batch of elves and mad scientists from a steampunk place, but the Steelheads went with it. Their dance hall was given a stage set from the noted counterculture event, along with posters, Volkswagen fans decked out in flower patterns, "woody" trucks with surfboards for music earlier in the 60s, and a number decking themselves out in hippie outfits.

Sheriff Fuzzball Ortega DJed the event, going all-out in dressing up the part of a 60's musician. He didn't have the infamous mountain of hair on, though the 60s being noted for bad hair sported another doo. His tunes had a variety of 60s songs from the Beach Boys to the hippie songs of Woodstuck. And yes, "Long Beautiful Hair" was among those played.

There was one other thing different about Fuzzball's DJing that night. It was the first time he spoke during a session. He plans to do so again in future events.

Baron Klaus Wulfenbach was among those attending the party. Normally his hair is a bit long and somewhat unkempt, like so many other eccentric scientists. But when dancing at a party full of long haired hippies, he showed up sporting a haircut, neat and trim, dressed in a business suit.

Trader1 Whiplash of the Relay staff was also there, and RFL kiosks were set up for the party. A few thousand was raised that night, bringing the total of the Steelhead Salmons team to over 172,000 Lindens. Less than 28,000 stands between the Salmons and Gold status.

The party went on for three hours of 60's fun, with some residents who grew up in the 60's and 70s talking about the shows they saw as kids, "I tried explaining Saturday Morning cartoons to my kids ... they couldn't imagine life without computers." "We had computers then. We called them pocket calculators."

At the close of the party, residents bid each other good night, and went their separate ways.

Enter Kalli Birman, known as Brandy Maltas in real life and the manager for SL musician Mankind Tracer. On her Facebook page, she made the following announcement:

"Since Linden Lab is not hosting an SL9b (SL9th B-day Event), Seth Regan,/Mankind Tracer in SL and I have decided to coordinate our own. The Tracer/Birman Agency will be producing the SL9B Street Fair and Pub Crawl. The event will be held June 19th-24th, 6PM-9PM, at six established and respected SL Live Music venues. Participating venues are: Club Graffiti, Gwampa's Dance Kamp, Key West, Boom Pony, Ground Zero and San Diego City."

So far, Kalli is offering "6 days - 6 venues - 18 live musicians!!!" Though it's highly likely more will be joining as time goes on.

Hamlet Au wrote more on his take on why the Lab wasn't hosting an anniversary event this year. In what he called "a harsh but necessary virtual reality check," he noted attendance has been declining in the more recent SLB events. Citing statistics provided by Daniel Voyager, he noted that about 38,000 visitors attended the SL3B events when Second Life had "about 200,000 active users… nearly 20% of the total userbase," and in the more recent SL6B, "when there were about 742,000 active SL users, only 17,712 attended … about 2% of the userbase."

Why the decline? His guess was "As SL's userbase has grown, there are fewer SLers who have a deep affinity with SL as a unified virtual community, and more who are just interested in going to their favorite nightclub or roleplaying sim or whatever sub-community they're affiliated with."

Hamlet's post was followed by a few comments. Some more or less suggested that it may not be so much newer residents having less affinity to "a unified virtual community," than residents old and new alike having less tolerance for Linden Lab's policies.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Xymbers Slade recently stopped at Virtual Yosemitie, an inworld depiction of the real-life American national park. Made by Sominel Edelman, the place is described as "an example of a whole new generation of sculpted off-sim environments." Xymbers himself was impressed with the place, "one of the best sims I've seen on the grid in a long long time."

However, a new bill, H.R. 3523, has made it through committee: the "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act," or CISPA. Intended to "allow the voluntary sharing of attack and threat information between the U.S. government and security cleared technology and manufacturing companies to ensure the security of networks against patterns of attack," the bill "has been criticized by advocates of Internet privacy and neutrality, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation … because they feel it contains too few limits on how and when the government may monitor private information when it might become collaterally entangled in the process of passing threat information, and too few safeguards with respect to how the data may be used; they fear that such new powers may be used to find and punish file sharers and copyright infringers rather than the stated foreign spies or hackers."

An article in Forbes.com describes opposition to the bill as mounting, "On Monday, a group of more than fifty professors, entrepreneurs and information security professionals published an open letter to Congress calling on lawmakers to oppose CISPA and other overbroad cybersecurity bills like the SECURE IT Act … CISPA has a very different focus from SOPA and PIPA, the much-loathed antipiracy bills killed by a similar groundswell of Internet anger in February. Whereas SOPA and PIPA raised fears of censorship, CISPA’s vague data-sharing statutes are largely seen as a threat to privacy, although some are also interpreting the bill as allowing site blocking. And whereas SOPA pitted Silicon Valley against Hollywood, CISPA seems to have the support of many technology and Web-based companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, Symantec, and IBM."

Thursday, April 26, 2012

For much of today, residents of Second Life suddenly found the Grid inaccessible. The website was also down for part of the day. Those able to check the Grid Status page found this message:

[Posted 7:20am PDT 26 April 2012] We are currently undergoing unscheduled maintenance. This may cause some Residents to be logged out or prevent some from being able to login. Our homepage (www.secondlife.com) is also unavailable during this maintenance, so live chat service is unavailable. Please keep an eye on this blog for updates.

There were various comments in places such as Facebook, "Nothing like enforced Castleville." "SL goes down at the most inconvenient times." And also the SL Universe forums, "It feels just like 2008 again.""With every hour it gets worse. OMG it's been an hour. Oh noooo three hours, what will I do? I haven't been able to get in since yesterday!" And there were comments on Twitter, among them Rodvik Humble, whom humored, "Someone just ran by my office on fire. Possibly a bad sign." "I knew I shouldn't have put my coffee on the big red button." In the end, he apologized for the downtime.

Maintenance was declared completed at 10:45 AM SL time, but was soon started up again, the Lindens admitting there was still problems with logins, rezzing, purchasing, etc. The last update was 1:20 PM, when they still advised against rezzing no copy objects and inworld transactions.

*Update* I've been unable to get online, and the latest update is as follows:

[Updated 3:23pm PDT 26 April 2012] Services are still undergoing maintenance - logins, billing, and other issues may occur. Some regions may be down intermittently. Please continue to refrain from rezzing no-copy objects, or transacting L$ or land. At this time, we do not have an estimated time of repair. Please continue to monitor this blog for updates.

*Update #2* This was the final update: [COMPLETED 7:15 pm PDT 26 April 2012] All maintenance has been completed. We really appreciate your patience and understanding with this matter. There are still a few regions that we’re helping with an assisted restart. They should be returning to service in a short amount of time.

Daniel Voyager found some statistics on for the Grid status that day: article here.

While in the Linden Endowment of the Arts sims, Gemma Cleanslate came across a particularly unusual art display. Called the "Crash Bang Trollop," it is temporarily there until another exhibition can be finished. What kind of exhibit is the Trollop? Well, it may be better viewed than described, but that didn't stop our reporter from trying.

Tuesday night's Relay for Life event at Club Cutlass was a success. DJ Dusk Griswold of the Passionate Redheads team played the music for the 60s and 70s themed event. A total of 11,106 Lindens were raised, bringing the total raised by the Redheads to over 58,000. The team, which has a large percentage of members in the Sunweaver Estates/HN Community where SL Newser has it's office, is now among the top half-dozen of the Bronze-ranked teams.

JessicaBelle Dayafter, whom has made a name for herself in the WW2 combat areas with her aircraft, now has an airbase. Heading there, one can practice dive-bombing and rocketing, dogfighting, or just chill out at the pilot's lounge. And of course her planes are there.

The Equinox has come and gone! Return to the Playa! Occuplaya 4/27 - 4/29

Spring or Fall? Depends on the hemisphere! We mark the change of seasons with many events, pageants, play, tomfoolery, and absurdity. Tis the season to join your fellow Burners and return to Deep Hole! Come party and play with an astounding line up of DJs and live music. Plus, in the Art Gallery, there will be poetry events throughout the weekend.

It's time to return! Time to recall that this little slice of the virtual Black Rock Desert is our Home! Its our Playa! So come on back and we’ll occupy it for the weekend! Bring your friends, bring strangers, robots, petites, furries, mer, fae, role players, and everyone else! We are all friends that have been acquainted or just met!

Occuplaya is just one of many 10 Principles-precompresson events leading up to the big BURN2 event. Come get a taste of what Burning Man on the Playa is all about!

BURN2 is an extension of the Burning Man festival and community into the world of Second Life. It is an officially sanctioned Burning Man regional event, and the only virtual world event out of more than 100 real world Regional groups.

The BURN2 Team operates events year around, culminating in an annual major festival of community, art and fire in the fall - a virtual echo of Burning Man itself.

We'd like to encourage you to use the following labels and hashtags when you write about the event: Burn2, #burn2 . We will promote those tags to make it easier for people to find your content.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

This week marks the close of April. But while the month lasts, there are a number of events on the Grid. From the Relay for Life Fantasy Faire to the Aviation Expo, one can find a number of happenings. And there are also the regular events from live music and DJ parties to talk shows, to poetry and book readings, and more.

"Come join the Passionate Redheads on April 24 from 5-7pm SL time as we step back in time to two great decades for music, the 60s and 70s! This two hour event will start with a best in 60s event, with $1000L to the winner of best in 60s! Hour two will be a 70s themed event, with another $1000L up for grabs for best in 70s wear. DJ Dusk Griswold will provide the themed music, and there will be kiosks set up to donate to the RFL. Come join us for a fun event."

Monday, April 23, 2012

It's been over a year since the Redzone controversy, and since then people wondered if there would ever be another system that jeopardized peoples' privacy and subjected them to banning from land not necessarily for bad behavior, but because a programer didn't like them. Greenzone, the group created in response to Redzone, began raising questions about another alt-detector, Voodoo. And recently the tensions between Voodoo and Greenzone escalated into threats by the company's owner, Monkey Wonder to blacklist everyone in the group questioning his product.

Grey Lupindo took a look at the week-long Relay for Life event currently taking place in Second Life: The 2012 Fantasy Faire. There was much to do, much to see, and much to shop for with the proceeds going to the American Cancer Society through the various teams of the Relay.

Last Sunday at April 15th, Nydia Tungsten, one of the Passionate Redheads team of the Relay for Life, was involved in two events. One was the DJ competition at the Legends Classic Rock Club. The other was for a raffle in which the Redheads gave out a special edition motorbike.

Saturday, April 21, 2012

It was "Friday Night at The Pocket" Australian club on the evening of April 20-April 21. The event started at 8 SL time, with a number of live singers that night. Finally at 10PM SL time, it was musician OhMy Kidd's turn. And he got his guitar and began singing. Saraine Sands was by his side as the "percussionist," tapping on a metal bell, and getting a few "needs more cowbell" jokes from the Americans in the crowd.

Finally someone pointed out, "Hey, it's OhMy Kidd's rezzday!" And the audience cheered and wished the singer a happy rezzday. Among them were CNN iReporter Any1 Gynoid, and a certain kangaroo avatar dancing with her.

The Pocket is at the Fendahl sim at (240, 85, 31), with Cellandra Zon as manager. The club was founded by the late Delinda Dyrrsen, a noted resident in Second Life media.

At our office building, we've set up a Relay for Life event board to better keep track of the many events in the Relay (such as the Harmony of Hope Luau tomorrow). To see it, head to HV Community (140, 60, 22).

A few residents had the feeling, "Oh well, it was going to be a lousy show anyway." But most wished that the Lindens hadn't made this decision. There were some whom thought it was not too great a surprise, citing the Lab no longer running other Linden-sponsored events of the past. One resident wondered if the Lab would soon be abandoning the Linden Endowment of the Arts as well. One resident thought this was a great opportunity for one of the major real estate companies to gain a public relations coup by offering to host a resident-created SL9B.

It was interesting to note that a Linden spokesman posted on the SL9B Fail thetas to address the residents:

Having seen the feedback in this thread and elsewhere about the plan for SL9B celebrations, we wanted to elaborate a bit about why we’ve decided to focus on promoting numerous events hosted by the community this year, rather than hosting a centralized celebration as we have in the past.

We want to give the Second Life community more control over the celebrations and to put the focus of the events where we think it really belongs: on you – the landowners, the creators, the artists, the DJs, the musicians, the venue managers – the people who make Second Life great every day.

Many of you have invested both time and money in your own venues inworld, and we think the SL9B celebrations are a good opportunity to introduce new people to the work you’ve put into cultivating a community presence inworld (rather than potentially drawing traffic away from your region to a central event). A collection of decentralized events and exhibits means that not only can many more creators participate, but it should also help us to avoid some of the performance challenges that have lessened the fun for attendees at past SL Birthdays.

As many of you have pointed out, there are pros and cons to the approach we’re taking this year, just as there have been in the past, but we hope you’ll choose to participate and enjoy the celebrations.

Various blogs had various opinions. Botgirl Questi came up with a parody of the song "F**k You," expressing anger at Linden Labs. Daniel Voyager expressed the sadness and disappointment so many others did, hoping that there would be an effort by residents to organize some kind of anniversary event.

Hamlet Au's response was different, "To be honest, I think this state of things is just as well." He brought up an incident last year in which an artist accused Linden Lab of using a design of hers for the event without her permission or credit and numerous residents protested in her behalf without bothering to ask for her own art to compare with what was used, "another telling illustration of Linden Lab's inevitably fractious, drama-rife relationship with its own user community … bad faith on Linden Lab's part is automatically assumed." The persistent lag was another reason.

Tateru Nino's perspective of the matter was perhaps the most unique. Years ago, she had run the Second Life Third Birthday event (not called SL3B until later). She was the organizer of the event, which "had two key differences to all of the other anniversary events that have come afterwards. Firstly, it wasn’t centralised, and secondly, Linden Lab was barely involved. " Linden Lab did provide six regions, which were used for parcels for landless communities and SL groups, an art show, and the grand parade. There were numerous birthday events across the Grid as well. She felt, "It worked astonishingly well … better than any of the anniversary events before or since."

Tateru called the Linden's announcement, "almost a return to the way it was when I organized it." But this time no organizer. She thought the birthday event could be successful if both someone stepped forward to organize it and Linden Lab remained relaxed with the rules. Otherwise, the whole thing would just fall flat. She also called the decision an opportunity for such an organizer. But judging from the feedback she was getting, there was no sign of someone stepping forward. at least for now.

" What I don’t know is if the Lab is returning to this anniversary model because it is one that is proven to work, because it realises that it is crap at doing this, it is unwilling to spend the money, or it has nobody able to handle the work. Or perhaps some combination of the above."

In any event, Linden Lab has pretty much handed over the SL9B event to anyone whom will take it.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Following up her visit to the Sea of Aley, Gemma Cleanslate checked up on her friend and fellow artist Mcarp Mavendorf. Join her as she interviews the artist with a fascination for clocks and time, and ends up in a rather precarious situation when taking a ride up and over the sim.

The development team at Phoenix/Firestorm are warning residents who use their viewers about a phishing scam that is targeting them.

The scammers claim that the people at Phoenix are paying Lindens to residents who take a survey. There is a link where the residents are led to a fake (but very realistic looking) login page. When the residents log in, their account name and passwords are taken. The scammers can then log in and steal the resident’s identity, Lindens and inventory. The scammers have even used the resident’s contact/friends list to send out phishing notes. This practice leads people to believe they are getting safe links since the information is coming from a friend.

Jessica Lyon of Phoenix/Firestorm stated that they are not paying Lindens for any type of survey. They are warning residents to be very careful about logging into fake sites. If residents believe they have been a target, they should immediately go to Secondlife.com to change their password.

For more information go to the Phoenix/Firestorm support site at http://www.phoenixviewer.com/. The site has detailed information on what URL to look for whenever you are asked to log into your account.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Every year in Second Life, there has been an official anniversary event, known as the SLB, or "Second Life Birthday." This year however, there will be none, On their official blog, Linden Lab annouced they were going to "focus the spotlight on community events" instead.

Xymbers is back after taking a look at a game that's gotten a bit of attention among some blogs and newsletters: Minecraft. So what's so special about Minecraft, some might ask. One might think all you do is just go around diging and diging about in a eight-bit world. As it turns out, there is more to it that that for this game. One needs to build a few things to get far, there are monsters to clobber, and sometimes other players to loot from (or get looted by).

In case you need a pick-me-up to get through your SL day, there are Red Bull and Coke dispensers outside the classroom, too.You won't need them to stay awake in the Syzygy classes, however, as they are awesome!

Be careful, however, when walking around the grounds.Odd creatures are springing up from the lawn and sewer.It's also possible to fall off the edge of the skybox.Or perhaps one of those creatures pushed me.In any event, beware!

The next class will be May 20, 2012 at 11:00 AM SLT.Dr. Anatine will be presenting a class on "Taming Your Inventory".We all know how out of control that can get!

Tuesday, April 17, 2012

This week offers a number of events on the Grid. From the Earth Day celebration this Saturday to the new Sanity Falls in Madpeas to the return of the Papermakis Exhibit, one can see these events and more across Second Life. And of course we have our regularly scheduled music events, talk shows, poetry readings, science lectures, and other happenings.

The sim-owner is experiencing bank issues since he moved to Ecuador, which is making it difficult to transfer money to the Lindens. If we can't raise the tier money for this month, the sim will disappear on April 23rd and with it Gairdin na Sidhe.

To help raise the money, I've set all the vased flowers at half price and put a donation box out for those who want to help support us. All sales and proceeds will be going towards the tier for this month to keep the sim and the store alive.

If we don't make it, I'd like to thank all of you who've visited and enjoyed my products. Let's hope this isn't our final goodbye. :)

Editor's Note: For those who don't know, Euranna was the manager of the defunct STA: a place in 2007 which besides its purpose of helping arrange trips abroad also served as a hangout and a starter place for newcomers. Following the STA's vanishing in Jan 2008, Euranna eventually founded the flower shop, where she continued to do business up to now. It really is a nice little flower shop, with gifts for all occasions.

Monday, April 16, 2012

There is a new controversy in Second Life. Many happy byngo players pass time in SL by playing this game. It is my understanding that it all began with neighbors of the byngo sites complaining about the shouting of the balls was bothering them. There seems to be a way to control this issue on land. But some property owners are not bothering, which added to the issue. After many requests to Linden Lab just to see if the issue had been solved, the creator of the byngo, Dazza Staheli, has shut down the byngo servers until it is all resolved.

I spoke to Dazza this morning and he told me, “I really don't think the first return was about shout .... Ok, well the first one was on a empty sim .. was rezzed then 5 hours later was returned .. our alt who is owner on all boards got a warning for wagering ... NOT ME and its my name on all boards as creator ... now the problem is this .... that game was never played .. even the Linden didn't play it .. so how could he say it was wagering ???? ... ok then .. 3 days past .. 400 sims played 100's of games 1000's of people and nothing .. all boards have same owner .. but nothing!!!! Then in a separate 'attack' on a sim, our board was AR'd .. a 180 day old linden employee went to that sim .. looked on her records and see's that the owner was warned 3 days earlier and she just does what she thinks is right and returns the board .... I still had no contact .. but my alt got 1 day suspn ... so I was faced with a decision .. run it and take the risk of losing my alt or close it down and let the Labs do their thing ..."

There are protests going on at various locations. One was held at Governor Linden’s home, and another at Mia Linden’s office. Here is a video of a protest held Saturday:

Direct Delivery for the Second Life Marketplace hasn't gone the way Linden Labs intended. At first, it seemed to be a simple bug of gifts to others not always reaching the recipient. But apparently, it's much more.

Inara Pey noted a number of other problems, including, "Listings on Marketplace do not match the actual items," incorrect merchant information (products from one seller listed as belonging to another), "products from one merchant appearing in stores belonging to other merchants, items incorrectly priced," and "incorrect ratings assigned to products (G-rated items appearing as Adult, etc)" She also stated she was beginning to observe "rising accusations of 'theft' among merchants as they come across what appears to be their own goods being listed by others." Tateru Nino called the source of the problem a "unicode bungle," listed in the JIRA as "WEB-4587."

The initial response from Linden Labs was largely silence. Then a few days ago, Rodvik Linden gave a few answers on his Twitter account, pointing out an update on the commerce forum, "team has been crunching non stop to get those issues addressed. We will update as soon as we have a fix." Calling it "not an acceptable quality of roll out," Tateru Nino deadpanned, "perhaps is wasn't an acceptable quality of rollout, but it was the level of quality that we have become used to all these years."

The commerce forum update was further updated the next day, saying "two of the top three outstanding issues" were addressed

• WEB-4580: purchases are now delivered to recipients with the inventory name (which does not allow unicode characters). This will prevent future orders from getting stuck in the Being Delivered state due to this issue. In addition, all orders affected by this problem have been pushed through. • WEB-4587: updates have been made to support updating store search results, which we will process over the next week; we continue to work on the issue related to mismatched data on listings. We do know that this issue has existed since September 2010 (during the migration from Xstreet to the Second Life Marketplace).

Hamlet's article on Rodvik's response drew some positive feedback from readers, mixed in with cautionary notes, "Wow, a straightforward acknowledgment, with no BS, no spin. … Kudos to Rodvik, may this act serve as an example for all of LL. This kind of forthcoming communication can make all the difference in the world in making SL live up to its full potential." the same resident also stated, "Whether it's truly accompanied by the promised action is a different issue … everyone should hold LL's feet to the fire on this regardless until it's fixed."

On the Linden forums, residents seemed a bit more critical, "And yet he can't even manage to post this timely info on his company's official website?" "Although it is refreshing to see a CEO like Rodvik use some of the other social media to communicate with the community, the flaw with Rodvik is that he seems to ONLY use non-LL official tools to interact with his customer base. "

Second Life Newser has yet to hear whether or not things have improved on Marketplace or not. But judging by some of the comments observed, some merchants and shoppers will be relying less on it.

Sunday, April 15, 2012

From the Relay for Life Bike Rally at "Perri's Xandu." Nydia Tungsten took a friend for a spin on a bike, but somehow it ended up spinning on it's backside. She soon corrected herself, and there were no scrapes on the paint job to take care of.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Last Saturday, the Cutlass Club of the Sunweaver Estates/HV Community held it's Easter party. And people dropped in with some interesting avatars. Among theme were these chocolate bunnies, one whom had a couple swords to discourage anyone coming in for a bite.

Also there was Rita Mariner and the "Sawyer Clones," all in Easter dress and bonnets. Someone later told me she found them a little creepy. More often, I hear chuckles about them, or people shrugging it off as just another example of the nuttiness around the Sunweavers.